Read this interesting commentary. It refers to a few bad apples in the USA Government in 1960's, not the entire Government. Carl
http://www.webcom.com/ctka/pr500-king.htmlProbe V7N4: The Matin Luther King Assassination Conspiracy Exposed in Memphis
From the May-June 2000 issue (Vol. 7 No. 4)
The Martin Luther King Conspiracy
Exposed in Memphis
By Jim Douglass
According to a Memphis jury's verdict on December 8,1999, in the wrongful death
lawsuit of the King family versus Loyd Jowers "and other unknown
co-conspirators," Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated by a conspiracy
that included agencies of his own government. Almost 32 years after King's
murder at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis on April 4, 1968, a court extended the
circle of responsibility for the assassination beyond the late scapegoat James
Earl Ray to the United States government.
I can hardly believe the fact that, apart from the courtroom participants, only
Memphis TV reporter Wendell Stacy and I attended from beginning to end this
historic three-and-one-half week trial. Because of journalistic neglect scarcely
anyone else in this land of ours even knows what went on in it. After critical
testimony was given in the trial's second week before an almost empty gallery,
Barbara Reis, U.S. correspondent for the Lisbon daily Publico who was there
several days, turned to me and said, "Everything in the U.S. is the trial of the
century. O.J. Simpson's trial was the trial of the century. Clinton's trial was
the trial of the century. But this is the trial of the century, and who's here?"
What I experienced in that courtroom ranged from inspiration at the courage of
the Kings, their lawyer-investigator William F. Pepper, and the witnesses, to
amazement at the government's carefully interwoven plot to kill Dr. King. The
seriousness with which U.S. intelligence agencies planned the murder of Martin
Luther King Jr. speaks eloquently of the threat Kingian nonviolence represented
to the powers that be in the spring of 1968.
In the complaint filed by the King family, "King versus Jowers and Other Unknown
Co-Conspirators," the only named defendant, Loyd Jowers, was never their primary
concern. As soon became evident in court, the real defendants were the anonymous
co-conspirators who stood in the shadows behind Jowers, the former owner of a
Memphis bar and grill. The Kings and Pepper were in effect charging U.S.
intelligence agencies - particularly the FBI and Army intelligence - with
organizing, subcontracting, and covering up the assassination. Such a charge
guarantees almost insuperable obstacles to its being argued in a court within
the United States. Judicially it is an unwelcome beast.
Many qualifiers have been attached to the verdict in the King case. It came not
in criminal court but in civil court, where the standards of evidence are much
lower than in criminal court. (For example, the plaintiffs used unsworn
testimony made on audiotapes and videotapes.) Furthermore, the King family as
plaintiffs and Jowers as defendant agreed ahead of time on much of the evidence.
But these observations are not entirely to the point. Because of the
government's "sovereign immunity," it is not possible to put a U.S. intelligence
agency in the dock of a U.S. criminal court. Such a step would require
authorization by the federal government, which is not likely to indict itself.
Thanks to the conjunction of a civil court, an independent judge with a sense of
history, and a courageous family and lawyer, a spiritual breakthrough to an
unspeakable truth occurred in Memphis. It allowed at least a few people (and
hopefully many more through them) to see the forces behind King's martyrdom and
to feel the responsibility we all share for it through our government. In the
end, twelve jurors, six black and six white, said to everyone willing to hear:
guilty as charged.
We can also thank the unlikely figure of Loyd Jowers for providing a way into
that truth.
Loyd Jowers: When the frail, 73-year-old Jowers became ill after three days in
court, Judge Swearengen excused him. Jowers did not testify and said through his
attorney, Lewis Garrison, that he would plead the Fifth Amendment if subpoenaed.
His discretion was too late. In 1993 against the advice of Garrison, Jowers had
gone public. Prompted by William Pepper's progress as James Earl Ray's attorney
in uncovering Jowers's role in the assassination, Jowers told his story to Sam
Donaldson on Prime Time Live. He said he had been asked to help in the murder of
King and was told there would be a decoy (Ray) in the plot. He was also told
that the police "wouldn't be there that night."
In that interview, the transcript of which was read to the jury in the Memphis
courtroom, Jowers said the man who asked him to help in the murder was a
Mafia-connected produce dealer named Frank Liberto. Liberto, now deceased, had a
courier deliver $l00,000 for Jowers to hold at his restaurant, Jim's Grill, the
back door of which opened onto the dense bushes across from the Lorraine Motel.
Jowers said he was visited the day before the murder by a man named Raul, who
brought a rifle in a box.
As Mike Vinson reported in the March-April Probe, other witnesses testified to
their knowledge of Liberto's involvement in King's slaying. Store-owner John
McFerren said he arrived around 5:l5 pm, April 4, 1968, for a produce pick-up at
Frank Liberto's warehouse in Memphis. (King would be shot at 6:0l pm.) When he
approached the warehouse office, McFerren overheard Liberto on the phone inside
saying, "Shoot the son-of-a-[censored] on the balcony."
Caf�-owner Lavada Addison, a friend of Liberto's in the late 1970's, testified
that Liberto had told her he "had Martin Luther King killed." Addison's son,
Nathan Whitlock, said when he learned of this conversation he asked Liberto
point-blank if he had killed King.
"[Liberto] said, 'I didn't kill the [censored] but I had it done.' I said, 'What
about that other son-of-a-[censored] taking credit for it?' He says, 'Ahh, he wasn't
nothing but a troublemaker from Missouri. He was a front man...a setup man.'"
The jury also heard a tape recording of a two-hour-long confession Jowers made
at a fall 1998 meeting with Martin Luther King's son Dexter and former UN
Ambassador Andrew Young. On the tape Jowers says that meetings to plan the
assassination occurred at Jim's Grill. He said the planners included undercover
Memphis Police Department officer Marrell McCollough (who now works for the
Central Intelligence Agency, and who is referenced in the trial transcript as
Merrell McCullough), MPD Lieutentant Earl Clark (who died in 1987), a third
police officer, and two men Jowers did not know but thought were federal agents.
Young, who witnessed the assassination, can be heard on the tape identifying
McCollough as the man kneeling beside King's body on the balcony in a famous
photograph. According to witness Colby Vernon Smith, McCollough had infiltrated
a Memphis community organizing group, the Invaders, which was working with the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference. In his trial testimony Young said the
MPD intelligence agent was "the guy who ran up [the balcony stairs] with us to
see Martin."
Jowers says on the tape that right after the shot was fired he received a
smoking rifle at the rear door of Jim's Grill from Clark. He broke the rifle
down into two pieces and wrapped it in a tablecloth. Raul picked it up the next
day. Jowers said he didn't actually see who fired the shot that killed King, but
thought it was Clark, the MPD's best marksman.
Young testified that his impression from the 1998 meeting was that the aging,
ailing Jowers "wanted to get right with God before he died, wanted to confess it
and be free of it." Jowers denied, however, that he knew the plot's purpose was
to kill King - a claim that seemed implausible to Dexter King and Young. Jowers
has continued to fear jail, and he had directed Garrison to defend him on the
grounds that he didn't know the target of the plot was King. But his interview
with Donaldson suggests he was not na�ve on this point.
Loyd Jowers's story opened the door to testimony that explored the systemic
nature of the murder in seven other basic areas: l) background to the
assassination; 2) local conspiracy; 3) the crime scene; 4) the rifle; 5) Raul;
6) broader conspiracy; 7) cover-up.
1) Background to the assassination: James Lawson, King's friend and an organizer
with SCLC, testified that King's stands on Vietnam and the Poor People's
Campaign had created enemies in Washington. He said King's speech at New York's
Riverside Church on April 4, 1967, which condemned the Vietnam War and
identified the U.S. government as "the greatest purveyor of violence in the
world today," provoked intense hostility in the White House and FBI.
Hatred and fear of King deepened, Lawson said, in response to his plan to hold
the Poor People's Campaign in Washington, D.C. King wanted to shut down the
nation's capital in the spring of 1968 through massive civil disobedience until
the government agreed to abolish poverty. King saw the Memphis sanitation
workers' strike as the beginning of a nonviolent revolution that would
redistribute income.
"I have no doubt," Lawson said, "that the government viewed all this seriously
enough to plan his assassination."
Coretta Scott King testified that her husband had to return to Memphis in early
April 1968 because of a violent demonstration there for which he had been
blamed. Moments after King upon arriving in Memphis joined the sanitation
workers' march there on March 28, 1968, the scene turned violent - subverted by
government provocateurs, Lawson said. Thus King had to return to Memphis on
April 3 and prepare for a truly nonviolent march, Mrs. King said, to prove SCLC
could still carry out a nonviolent campaign in Washington.
2) Local conspiracy: On the night of April 3, 1968, Floyd E. Newsum, a black
firefighter and civil rights activist, heard King's "I've Been to the Mountain
Top" speech at the Mason Temple in Memphis. On his return home, Newsum returned
a phone call from his lieutenant and was told he had been temporarily
transferred, effective April 4, from Fire Station 2, located across the street
from the Lorraine Motel, to Fire Station 3l. Newsum testified that he was not
needed at the new station. However, he was needed at his old station because his
departure left it "out of service unless somebody else was detailed to my
company in my stead." After making many queries, Newsum was eventually told he
had been transferred by request of the police department.
The only other black firefighter at Fire Station 2, Norvell E. Wallace,
testified that he, too, received orders from his superior officer on the night
of April 3 for a temporary transfer to a fire station far removed from the
Lorraine Motel. He was later told vaguely that he had been threatened.
Wallace guessed it was because "I was putting out fires," he told the jury with
a smile. Asked if he ever received a satisfactory explanation for his transfer
Wallace answered, "No. Never did. Not to this day."
